[PSUBS-MAILIST] FWD: Submarine Ball

["Mark Steed" <plutomark@mail.astate.edu>]

Here is the US Navy's version of our convention- Mark Steed

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From: dlnews_sender@DTIC.MIL
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Date:          Fri, 9 May 2003 18:20:05 -0400

NEWS RELEASE from the United States Department of Defense

No. 314-03
(703)697-5131(media)
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 9, 2003
(703)428-0711(public/industry)

UNDER SECRETARY FOR INTELLIGENCE OUTLINES TRANSFORMATION OF ANOTHER "SILENT SERVICE"

The remarks below are the text of a speech Under Secretary of
Defense for Intelligence Dr. Stephen Cambone delivered to the
nation's submarine community on the 103rd anniversary of the
submarine service's founding.

TRANSFORMATION OF THE SUBMARINE COMMUNITY

SUBMARINE BALL

April 26, 2003

Stephen A. Cambone

I don't know who said this, but it's a good rule to live by:
that the finer the meal, the shorter the speech ought to be,
which means I'll be speaking for a very brief time.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to address this
remarkable group, one that includes so many of America's best,
on the 103rd birthday of the United States Navy's submarine
service.  My thanks go to Rear Admiral and Mrs. Sullivan, and
Vice Admiral Mrs. Szemborski, for inviting me and making me feel
so welcome here this evening, and to Mrs. MacNeil of the Navy
League for the outstanding support of her organization.

I would also like to recognize Admiral and Mrs. Bowman, Vice
Admiral and Mrs. Nathman, Admiral and Mrs. Chiles, Admiral and
Mrs. Mies, Vice Admiral and Mrs. Reynolds, and Vice Admiral
Bacon.

I'd like to recognize Captain and Mrs. Rush -- Charlie Rush, of
course, holds a singular spot in history for his actions on USS
BILLFISH in 1943.  And, of course, a special debt of thanks goes
from all of us to Mrs. Eleanor Rickover, whose husband, the
father of the nuclear Navy, contributed so much not only to the
submarine service and the Navy but to the defense of our
country.  You should know, Mrs. Rickover, that there are a lot
of submariners in this room who take special pride in being able
to say that they are one of Rickover's boys.

I would like to recognize as well the officers and crews of the
submarines deployed tonight around the world in support of
Operation Iraqi Freedom and other contingencies.

        I've observed something interesting about our country's
military forces over the years -- an apparently mundane point,
but actually quite telling.

Our nation's military forces are loud.

>From the Army's "Screaming Eagles," to the barking Devil Dogs of
the Marine Corps, to the fighters and bombers that the Air Force
celebrates in its hymn as having "one hell of a roar" -- when
America's Armed Forces show up, everybody in the neighborhood
knows about it.

Not so in the case of the United States Navy's submarine
community, the nation's "silent service."  Teddy Roosevelt would
have loved you guys.  No service walks more softly or carries a
bigger stick.  And, as the face of warfare changes in this new
millennium, your prowess and adaptability remain as critical as
ever to our nation's military successes.

In a speech to The Citadel in September 1999, then-candidate
George W. Bush said, "The best way to keep the peace is to
redefine war on our own terms."  In a sentence, the president
defined the purpose and objective of the department's effort to
transform itself.

As a way of underscoring his determination to bring about that
transformation, the president reminded his Citadel audience of
an earlier time when a free people -- the British during the
1930's -- confronted what he called "rapid change and momentous
choices."

        It was a time when Nazi Germany was seeking to redefine
war and Britain was reluctant to rearm and remodel its armed
forces.  It was then that Winston Churchill sounded this clarion
call, repeated by the president as an expression of his own
concern:  "The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of
soothing and baffling expedience, of delays, is coming to a
close.  In its place, we are entering a period of consequences."

Unhappily that period of consequences arrived for us on September 11, 2001.

Each of the services has turned to in the effort to transform
the defense establishment.  Together they have shifted nearly
$80 billion over the current fiscal year defense plan to
transform the force.  As a result, the department has programmed
or planned for the initial deployment of missile defense; the
launch of a space-based radar system; deployment of laser-based
satellite communications systems; procurement of high-speed
vessels, UCAVs, and the Army's Future Combat System; and the
Navy's next generation aircraft carrier, the CVN-21.

And your own community, as well, continues to transform itself.
After all, submarine warfare has been about transformation for
over 100 years -- its birth was difficult as it struggled
against the naval establishment's view of warfare, and it
wrestled with the constraints of physics and the limits of
technology.  Submarines were originally assigned as mere scouts
to the main battle fleet.  When that fleet was disabled at Pearl
Harbor, the submarine force went forward -- alone and unafraid
-- to operate with audacity, courage and malfunctioning
torpedoes.  The submarine assault on the Imperial Japanese Navy
and the blockade of Japan, came at the cost of 52 submarines and
more than 3,500 valiant men.  But it dealt a crippling blow to
Imperial ambition.  You led the way to victory in the Pacific.

Following the war, you followed the spectacular with what many
thought to be the impossible.  You led the world in a radical
leap into the nuclear age.  When USS Nautilus shifted colors the
morning of January 17, 1955 and got "underway, on nuclear
power," you did something no one else had ever done.

Your community continued to transform rapidly during the 1950s
and 1960s, becoming a key to victory in the Cold War.  You led
the way in nuclear deterrence, taking ballistic missiles to sea.
 You led the way on cruise missiles.  Stealth operations became
your stock in trade.  And you invented modern anti-submarine
warfare.  The nearly 4,000 strategic deterrent patrols to date,
coupled with strike and fast-attack war-fighting savoir faire,
enabled our nation to defend itself and its friends while
thwarting Soviet ambition in a succession of quiet duels under
the oceans.  Many of you know the details of those duels.  For
the rest of us, we will wait for those stories to be told.  When
they are told, the people of this nation will marvel at your
deeds and give full expression to the gratitude it owes to its
silent warriors.

Today, the threat emanating from the deep ocean has been much
diminished.  But it has not vanished.  For that reason, you
continue your patrols, SSBNs and SSNs alike, in defense of the
nation.

The reduced blue-water threat has not left the submarine
community without a mission.  Those who wish us ill know they
cannot discount the capability of the silent service to reach
out and ring their bell.

As an example, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, you demonstrated
your skills with the usual aplomb, firing from 12 American
fast-attack boats a significant fraction of the Tomahawk cruise
missiles that helped bring down Saddam's regime.

There is a modus operandi associated with the submarine service.
 Even as you operate at a very high tempo, you continue to
develop new technologies, new ways of doing business, and then
use them with tremendous skill.  That is very much the spirit of
transformation.

As a result of the president's direction to transform the United
States military, our military has a new defense strategy and, as
part of that new strategy, is developing a new strategic triad,
as laid out in the latest Nuclear Posture Review.  The submarine
force is a key component of the new triad's offensive and
defensive capabilities.

As we transform intelligence, submarine warfare is on the
cutting edge.  We are looking to create intelligence
capabilities that emphasize persistence and greater resistance
to denial and deception.  These have been the hallmarks of
submarine operations and involvement in intelligence for 50
years.

Submarine operations also will play a role in homeland defense,
tracking, intercepting, and, if ordered to do so by the
commander in chief, interdicting vessels that transport or
employ weapons of mass destruction.

You have already begun to transform the service.  The conversion
of four SSBNs to SSGNs, your development of a new
special-purpose SSN, your development of new SEAL delivery
systems, and your development of the Virginia-class SSN, slated
for delivery in summer of next year -- ahead of schedule -- are
all part of the changes you are making.

You have taken on new missions including increased and, in ways,
more difficult intelligence missions and expanded your support
to special operations forces, as the recent experiments with the
USS Florida demonstrated.  You are developing unmanned undersea
and airborne vehicles to extend your reach and influence against
a wide array of targets at sea and ashore.  You continue to
develop capabilities for collaborative, joint and coalition
operations, in shallow water and littoral regions, and against
asymmetric threats.

Today, submarines are fully connected and integrated assets in
joint operations.  We need continued advances in systems and
tactics to give our submarine force new capabilities to reach
further under ever more difficult conditions and with even
greater security.

Much, then, is expected of you in the coming years.   When we
recall the words of candidate Bush on the aim of transformation
-- of conducting warfare on our terms and maximizing our
advantages -- undersea warfare should be brought to everyone's
mind.  Here is an endeavor where our preeminence is historic,
enduring and unquestioned.  I can think of no operational,
technical or financial challenge, including missile defense that
is more daunting, difficult and costly than preserving our
freedom of action beneath the ocean's waves.  Two world wars and
a 40-year Cold War are proof.  But the character of the threat
is changing.  Therefore, so too must our undersea warfare
capabilities.  We are looking to you, in the finest tradition of
the service, to bring forward the technology, doctrine, and
tactics to assure that we do not cede this preeminence, so
dearly bought by your predecessors.

To that end, the Department of Defense committed last year to
undertake a study on the future of undersea warfare.  Its
premise is that the United States must maintain its undersea
preeminence.  It seeks to provide help in answering the
question, 'what investments to make to ensure that preeminence?'
 The study is to examine undersea forward presence, the use of
special forces, ways by which to conduct information operations,
and nationally tasked missions, all with the goal of learning
how to best defeat anti-access threats, prosecute adversaries'
undersea forces, and provide in the future the war-fighting
capabilities currently fulfilled by the undersea warfare forces.

This study, and other investment decisions made by the
Department of Defense, will provide this splendid community with
the kind of opportunity it thrives on.

Capable, confident, audacious, and creative, you have the
opportunity to chart the next leg of the course for the
submarine service.  You have proven before that you can loose
yourselves from past dogma to embrace the promise of the future.

The nation needs such an effort from you again.  It needs to
have you succeed in transforming from a Cold War fleet to a
21st-century fighting force, able to provide a stealthy presence
and defeat any enemy on or under the sea, even as you strike
precisely and with devastating effect to the full depth of an
adversary's territory.

The nation needs this effort from you because we are a nation at
war; we do not know how long it will last, but it is unlikely to
be short.

We cannot know where all of its battles will be fought.  There
are multiple fronts in this war, and there is no single theater
of operations.

We do know that we are all at risk, at home and abroad, civilians and military alike.

We do know that battles and campaigns will be both conventional
and unconventional in their conduct.

Some of those battles and campaigns will be fought in the open.
Others will be fought in secret, where our victories will be
known to only a few.

For the submarine service, it means that we are planning and
fighting today's battles even as we prepare for that longer
campaign.  It is up to us to build on your storied legacy, build
on its unequaled success and encourage the coming generation to
reach for greatness by upholding the finest traditions of the
"silent service."

Thank you.

[Web version: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/May2003/b05092003_bt314-03.html]

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